Tag Archives: Calvin Coolidge

It’s almost an unwritten rule that America’s President take care of a pet during their stay in the White House, even if the only reason is that having a pet is a good way to make the man with more power than anyone else in the free world just a tad bit more relatable. And also because pets are adorable. Currently, the White House is home to two Portuguese Water Dogs, and dogs and cats are pretty typical presidential pets because they’re pretty typical regular pets. But that’s not always the case. Throughout our nation’s histories, some presidents have decided, “I’m the President, goddamn it, I can choose any pet I want” before taking care of the best and most insane pets ever.

Here are five times that American Presidents thought a bit outside the box when it came to pets.

We recently wrote an article that focused on the Medal of Honor—mainly, how the military’s highest honor, now given only to acts of almost impossible levels of valor, was sort of tossed around pretty willy-nilly in the years after the Civil War and before World War I. In that discussion, we briefly mentioned a U.S. Marine named Smedley Butler, who straight up tried to turn down his first Medal of Honor (yes, he was later awarded a second one) because he didn’t think he deserved it. We then came to realize that Smedley Butler, a badass with a kind of funny first name, isn’t really well known to the casual American—hell, we had only sort of stumbled across his career by accident.

And that’s some bullshit, because Smedley Butler died as the most highly decorated Marine in U.S. history, and served 34 years where he managed to collect medals, tropical diseases, and tactics for tricking the enemy like it was his job. Well, it sort of was his job, he was a marine, but you get the picture.

So allow us to spend three thousand words or so gushing about Smedley Butler, The Fighting Quaker.